"[F]rom the eighteen century the political juridical world and the economic world appear as heterogenous and incompatible worlds. The idea of and economic-juridical science is strictly impossible and what is more it has never in fact been constituted. Homo oeconomicus is someone who can say to the juridical sovereign, to the sovereign possessor of rights and founder of positive law on the basis of the natural right of individuals: You must not, because I have rights and you must not touch them. This is what the man of right, homo juridicus, says to the sovereign: I have rights, I have entrusted some of them to you, the others you must not touch, or: I have entrusted you with my rights for a particular end. Homo oeconomicus does not say this. He also tells the sovereign: You must not. But why must he not? You must not because you cannot. And you cannot in the sense that "you are powerless". And why are you powerless, why can't you? You cannot because you do not know, and you do not know because you cannot know."
-Michel Foucault en su conferencia del 28 de marzo de 1979 en el College de France.
